Downloading to a NAS without "PC" on + SOHO office

Is it possible to use a NAS to download torrents/Anything and record from a network tv tuner (ceton infinitv) without having your computer on. I've seen Synology has a download manager that allows you to, but I'm not sure if it allows you to open a torrent file, or something like that. 

I know you could do this with a pc, but I know with my own pc if I leave it on overnight, it heats up my room and I wake up super dehydrated. Also, my computer gets hours of use daily, so leaving it on longer than necessary will shorten its lifespan. 

If its possible to use a NAS as a pseudo-standalone device, I figured it would be on 24/7, low power consumption, you'd be able to connect, control, access files remotely.

The ideal setup would be 

- A 2-4 bay nas (6-12tb) that can download, record tv from network cable card(PVR), remote access/management, low power/heat, and uses a VPN service without having a pc/tablet on. 

 

I'd say go DIY-NAS. Connectivity all you want on a pc, pop in a last gen atom/celeron/pentium or comparable amd chip. It'll be cheaper than a prebuilt NAS that has all those features...

Update:

I'm gonna go with the DIY-NAS eventually. In the meanwhile I flashed my TP-WNR4300 n750 router with openWRT. I connected an old 250gb WD passport HD to it w/ 3 partitions; an ext4 to expand root, a swap, and then the majority for storage. I installed transmission, miniDLNA, samba server, and DDNS ip updater (to update my ip at the sites I use for DDNS). Using no-ip, and portforwarding I can access transmission from inside or outside my network. I installed a tranmission-remote-gui on my computer and theres and app for android. Also every thing that gets downloaded to the hardrive, shows up on all my dlna enabled devices. So its excatly what I wanted.

Ideally, I would do all my torrenting directly to the NAS. But the issue is that openWRT comes pre installed with dropbear for SSH, and its slow (2.5Mbp/s). I havent gotten the samba server to work flawlessly, but I think that would speed things up. And the driver is a 5400rpm drive, but that runns alot faster connected to my pc. I think its one of two things; either the cpu of the router is just not powerful enough, or I SSH is just to slow.

NEW QUESTION: whats the fastest file transfer protocol for local/remote networking? SSH,FTP, SFTP..?